The Department of the Interior announced Wednesday that oil and gas companies are not attempting to drill in Alaska's controversial wildlife refuge.
As required by a 2017 law, the Biden administration offered the private sector the opportunity to drill in areas within the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
But on Wednesday, it announced that no companies had submitted bids. The deadline to submit bids for the training was Monday.
“Oil companies' lack of interest in developing the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge reflects what we and they have known all along: It is too special to risk drilling for oil and gas. “There are some places that are too sacred,” Laura Daniel Davis said. The acting deputy secretary of the Interior Ministry said in a written statement.
Whether to allow drilling in the refuge has been a source of partisan conflict for years.
Republican lawmakers generally support drilling there, calling it an opportunity to get more oil.
Democratic lawmakers who have generally opposed it point to the unique wildlife found there, including grizzly bears, polar bears, gray wolves, caribou and more than 200 species of birds. Additionally, the area includes lands considered sacred by the Gwich'in people.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 requires the Department of the Interior to provide at least two shelter-based training opportunities.
A preliminary auction for drilling rights under the Trump administration received a small number of bids, most of them from the Alaska Department of Industrial Development and Export.
The Biden administration subsequently suspended drilling leases issued as a result of the 2021 auction, citing “multiple legal deficiencies.”
